Bad Stories about Good Decisions

This post is a reworked comment on my Lie To Me essay.

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.. Before I elaborate, for many people focused attention on their crises can be so painful it causes harm. If it’s too painful to talk through, consider body-based therapies, particularly sensorimotor approaches. The concept is to work on the emotionality of the crisis as it plays out in the body. This approach strives to create safety and perspective without triggering unbearable pain and the associated defenses.

.. Also, we are much better decision makers than story-tellers. Trust your decision, and let yourself have some perspective on the story you tell.

Now, a more analytical response.

You write of acceptance. It is a tremendously valuable skill. Do you accept how your brain alters facts, perspective and your sense of agency? The brain creates significant distortion, especially for emotional stories. Yet we have always lived through the lens of this distortion. It is unrecognizable. Before you are quick to accept the truth of the story, you might consider accepting the qualities of the story-teller.

On 9/12/01, psychologists interviewed people and asked them about the terrorist strike on the Twin Towers.¹ Three months, and one year later, the psychologists followed up and asked those the same question. The study reports 49% had distorted factual recall of the 9/11 attacks [e.g. How many airplanes were involved in the attack?”] and 28% had distorted personal recall [e.g. “Where were you when you first became aware of the attack?”].

So my first point: facts are facts, unless they aren’t. Be respectful of memory weaknesses. Also, I could write at length about the topic of mind-blindness, and we might come to have greater respect for how much fact and data we might overlook in periods of high emotionality.

A made-up story: Bob lost enough money his life was disrupted. The example works for a range of money, more money lost, the deeper the crisis. If in this example, he had lost all his money, he’d consider suicide.

So even if the facts aren’t in dispute, we still have to account for innate distortions the brain creates and its faulty sense of agency.

Illusions about visual information demonstrate catch the brain in the act of distortion. One of my favorite illusions is of two table tops. One looks fat and wide. The other looks long and skinny. Stare at the images as long as you want, and you’ll swear it’s true. The table tops, however, are the same size.

Our eyes see the actual facts of the image and represent it with fidelity. But our brains have innate rules for processing images. Our mental representation of the table is only after our brain interprets it. Complex and highly emotional events invoke many other processing rules which can cause material distortion to our understanding of the the circumstances.

I would never dispute Bob’s loss of money. Bank statement could prove it. Still, I would anticipate his brain would render a disfigured account of the story about this fact.

A crisis, more particularly the brain’s interpreted story of the crisis, is viewed from an intensely first-person perspective. The viewer over-claims agency: I caused this to happen, I let this happen, It’s all my fault, and so on. This claim of agency is a third noteworthy distortion.

For Bob, would it be his fault if his ex-spouse ran off with all the money? Or was the event just the random quality of life? The brain hates randomness, and often creates a sense of control by self-blame.

I have listed three brain qualities shown to distort stories. We need some means of developing different perspective. If I gave you a ruler to measure the table illusion, you would measure table tops of equal size.

They look different. They are not different.

The ruler changes perspective. Our brain needs a ruler.

Perspective on the brain is perspective on its stories and its capacity for distortion. Perspective lets us consider stories as stories. We cannot wish them away just as we cannot look at the table illusion and see equal sized tables. But we can ‘right-size’ the significance.

When we measure our stories we see our self apart from the suffering, we create a gift of perspective that anyone in crisis should value. This act of self-compassion is the heart of resilience and promotes healing of pain.

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1. Budson, a., Simons, J., Waring, J., Sullivan, a., Hussoin, T., Schacter, D., et al. (2007). Memory for the September 11, 2001, Terrorist Attacks one Year Later in Patients with Alzheimer's Disease, Patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment, and Healthy Older Adults. Cortex, 43(7), 875-888. In this study, the control group of adults is what interests me. One year later, 28% had faulty personal recall, and 49% had faulty factual recall. ↩